A Special Financial Update

Scouting is an integral part of our communities and as a local, independent council, the Connecticut Yankee Council is committed to delivering Scouting’s mission to you and the 37 Connecticut communities we serve. We are thankful for your continued support that allows us to deliver Scouting’s mission. As key stakeholders, we want to provide you with important updates from our council and the National Boy Scouts of America.

Over the last several years, our council has been in a challenging financial position. We’ve been laser-focused on resolving our own financial sustainability issues to create a long-term financial success plan. Our staff and volunteers have taken difficult and prudent measures to resolve concerns and dig out from long-term debt from legacy capital projects.

We are seeing positive results. These efforts have created annual surpluses, strengthened our endowment, and established enough working capital to maintain services and support to our youth, families, units and the communities we serve.

The Connecticut Yankee Council and the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America are 100% separate entities, which means our camps, properties, funds and investments are owned and controlled 100% by the Connecticut Yankee Council. Drilling down, your local unit is owned by its charter organization, typically a community, religious, service or academic organization.

We partner with the National Boy Scouts of America to deliver Scouting’s mission; leveraging tools, guidelines, resources and their network, while remaining independent.

With that in mind, we feel it’s important to share an update following a letter released yesterday from Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh. He reaffirmed the National Council’s focus is on keeping children safe and delivering our nation’s foremost program of character development and values-based leadership training.

Chief Scout Executive’s letter clearly explained the Boy Scouts of America’s commitment to the social and moral responsibility to fairly compensate victims who suffered abuse during their time while in Scouting, and the deep care and concern for all victims of child sex abuse. He also explained the proactive steps to help victims not only heal, but also to prevent future abuse. As an organization, we will always seek to act swiftly to remove those individuals when alerted to abuse allegations.

A final note, should you be contacted by the media, please politely refer them to press@ctyankee.org and our team at the Milford Resource Center will work with them.

To conclude, we want to thank you again for your support of Scouting and all the work you do to bring Scouting to life in your community.

The Connecticut Yankee Council is the local chapter of the Boy Scouts of America, providing programs and services to more than 9,700 young people and 3,300 volunteers in Fairfield, New Haven and parts of Hartford counties of Connecticut.